Could you look at this UI display problem ? I just use UI addon “Tabs interface”
This Addon is very useful if you have too many addons .It is very hard to find addon in blender default UI !
I don’t have this display problem using old texTools just like other addon .
I find this display problem in 1.0 texTools! Maybe you change something in new textools UI codes ?
It is pleasure you can have look at this !
Big thanks!

Could you look at this UI display problem ? I just use UI addon “Tabs interface”
This Addon is very useful if you have too many addons .It is very hard to find addon in blender default UI !
I don’t have this display problem using old texTools just like other addon .
I find this display problem in 1.0 texTools! Maybe you change something in new textools UI codes ?
It is pleasure you can have look at this !
Big thanks!

Solution is not really to make addon developers to follow tabs interface standards, but make tabs interface core blender compatible, I wanted to like that addon but there is way too many addons that doesnt work at all with the interface he build.

Does creating an atlas from materials is destructive?
If I want to change a color after I’ve created From: materials To: Atlas, can I go back somehow?
I want to have the workflow for coloring parts, creating an atlas, exporting to unity and test it, then change some colors or paint some other parts.
It seems like after creating the atlas I lose all the information about which part is which.
Also when I change a preset, then move to another one and back, the preset is reverted. Is there a way to make them persist?

I am planning to create a few YouTube videos for that particular generation, e.g. don’t have to read a wall of text.

Personally I would rather read text. I think when people post text tutorials they tend to be more detailed because they have to think about what they are typing. Rather than just hitting the screen record button and starting to speak. Also I do not have 24/7 internet access, so if I can just print out a document to pdf and save it on my computer I can go back and read it again at any time. But that is just my problem.

It is a pet peeve of mine that people record YouTube videos and just move the mouse and hit keys. They forget that the person viewing that video later cannot see their keyboard or mouse buttons. Screencast keys addon has been included with blender for years and people just forget to turn it on. It gets frustrating viewing a video and trying to figure out how the person did a certain thing. But that is the blender world. I have ALMOST come to accept it.

I’m with SHABA1, written documentation with images is my ideal. GIFs are my pet peeve. They’re great for the short things renderhjs shows most of the time but long GIFs that show off some feature with no controls are just frustrating because it’s almost guaranteed you’re going to have to watch it 1.5 to 2 times.

I’m with SHABA1, written documentation with images is my ideal. GIFs are my pet peeve. They’re great for the short things renderhjs shows most of the time but long GIFs that show off some feature with no controls are just frustrating because it’s almost guaranteed you’re going to have to watch it 1.5 to 2 times.

obsurveyor: I was going to say exactly that about animated gifs but this tool is just so awesome that I shut my mouth. In any case the gifs on this page and on the author’s web site are easy to dowload and view later. And as I said they are just so good that I just overlook my pet peeve with video tutorials.

Hi, you have finaly stoped adding features so its a great time to test some of this. Im getting a lot of errors so far but i realy like a lot of stuff you put into this.

So for face selection bake, i need to have “draw” brush, if the name is set differently it will give error (im not sure why it needs draw to work but you can use Shift+K for filling selected faces if thats possible) Another problem is that if i set vertex color to red it will bake red color. And last thing is that if i select a face or few faces it always bake like if i was selecting everything.

Every time i hit preview button it creates new Image texture node and they stack over.

Hi ! First thanks a lot for all the effort you put into making Blender better with this awesome addon !

There are however some improvements i was thinking about.

When assigning id_material, it would be nice to also set the color to the Viewport Color of the material.

When baking id_material, baked texture should have the same color as the material (by default)

For the baking methode, being able to choose to bake from meshname, groupname or parenting.
For exemple, if i decide to parent both my low and high poly to an empty to move them easily, it will conflict with the groupname/meshname methode.
So i think being able to choose the methode would be a nice addition !

For the naming of the objects, it would be nice to choose to ignore everything behind high/low suffix.
As exemple: crate_high.handle would behave as it would have been crate_high.001 or so instead of being displayed as crate_handle.
It allows to have better objects description and fit to the Substance Designer/Painter naming methode.

When editing UVs, warn about locked fonctions (ie: rectify) as to why they are locked. I was wondering why i couldn’t use rectify until i figure out that UV/Edit Sync was enabled.

I just use UI addon “Tabs interface”
This Addon is very useful if you have too many addons .It is very hard to find addon in blender default UI !

I changed the tab label back to just “TexTools” instead of including also the version number. I noticed that when i just used numbers blender was playing odd, so perhaps just a plain tab name will fix things for you. Will be in the next update.

Yes i have actually added that baking mode, it will be in the next uodate. It uses the blender internal render and normalized is enabled. Will share screens later when i am home. Will be included in the next update.

Does creating an atlas from materials is destructive?
If I want to change a color after I’ve created From: materials To: Atlas, can I go back somehow?
that is correct at the moment its only a one way conversion. Converting from textures and uv maps to color ID’s is on my road map for a near future update. This would also allow to convert other assets manually done with texture tiles as well. Something i want as well for a project i worked on recently. So fingers crossed sometime soon.

@SHABA1 & @obsurveyor
Regarding documentation: personally i also prefer searchable / indexable content that i can process as fast as i can. But its important to have a few small videos e.g. 3 min each that narrate specific tools a bit and explain how things can be used.

Thanks a lot for sharing this. It looks useful for a lot of different things, but the first thing that I was thinking about was how sometimes I’d like to make regular mesh clothing, flatten it, and then use a cloth modifier on it-- ie, start with a real mesh to make a pattern. I’ve actually used UV map exports as reference images for meshes to do this once or twice, and might consider doing it more often if it was easy. I’ll definitely be checking out textools.

Im getting a lot of errors so far but i realy like a lot of stuff you put into this

Yeah there will be always some errors but I am really trying with each release to iron out more of them. Part of it is also the complexity of some tools because there are many ways of doing things in blender, like: active object != selection, UV sync mode != UV face selection modes, editing objects in object mode vs editing with face selection context etc. So a lot of tools have already a lot of context sensitive ways of executing.
But each tool is it’s own python file, so keeping the kitchen clean is easy and rewarding when improving individual tools

So for face selection bake, i need to have “draw” brush, if the name is set differently it will give error (im not sure why it needs draw to work but you can use Shift+K for filling selected faces if thats possible) Another problem is that if i set vertex color to red it will bake red color.

You are right I actually hardcoded that. Must have slipped my mind after copying code snippets from the script listener in blender.
Is now addressed and will be in the next update

And last thing is that if i select a face or few faces it always bake like if i was selecting everything.

Are you in object or edit mode? In object mode I ignore the face selection, only when you are in edit mode I bake the selected faces.

Every time i hit preview button it creates new Image texture node and they stack over.

When assigning id_material, it would be nice to also set the color to the Viewport Color of the material.

Do you mean like assign materials as well as vertex colors when assiging Color ID’s?

baking id_material, baked texture should have the same color as the material (by default)

No that’s not how it works, for that you have the ‘Diffuse’ bake mode as noted in the documentation. The Material ID bake mode assigns unique colors, not existing colors.
This is because after all you might also work with you own multiple materials but then want a mask of the different materials, that’s what that bake mode is for.
Use the diffuse mode instead

For the baking methode, being able to choose to bake from meshname, groupname or parenting.
For exemple, if i decide to parent both my low and high poly to an empty to move them easily, it will conflict with the groupname/meshname methode.
So i think being able to choose the methode would be a nice addition!

I don’t like to have many toggles and options in the UI, I prefer context sensitive tools. What I have added from your feedback is that the parent object name is only added if the parent object is part of the selection. You can see that in action here
This will be part of the next update

For the naming of the objects, it would be nice to choose to ignore everything behind high/low suffix.
As exemple: crate_high.handle would behave as it would have been crate_high.001 or so instead of being displayed as crate_handle.

Implemented and I agree. Will be in the next update. See demo

When editing UVs, warn about locked fonctions (ie: rectify) as to why they are locked. I was wondering why i couldn’t use rectify until i figure out that UV/Edit Sync was enabled.

I changed rectify so it is a lot more tolerant. What I think happend in your case is that you active object was not your selection or there was no selection. The validation of the tool expected that however. This has been addressed for rectify and all other tools that I could match against this.

And thanks for your feedback, managed to make some great improvements as a result

Hi! First of all thanks for this addon, it really makes my life better

I’m having some issues with the baking part. It seems to be a very powerful solution but i can’t really figure out how to make it works properly.

This is basically what i have done:

1 i’ve created my low poly object named “objectA_LP”
2 I’ve duplicated it and i’ve renamed it “objectA_HP”
3 I’ve splitted both objects (HP/LP) in sub objects to explode them for normal map baking. I have the same number of pieces for each splitted model and names/parts match correctly. (I have objectA_LP, objectA_LP.001, objectA_LP.002 as i have objectA_HP, objectA_HP.001, objectA_HP.002)

I don’t know if i’m doing something wrong but, when i select all (but also in general) the explode button is grayed out.
Moreover, if i try to move any part just for a test purpose and i press the organize buttons to match their position again nothing happens.

It’ a pity because, as i says previewsly, it seems to be a really useful feature specially when baking complex mechanical parts.

Let me know if i’m doing something wrong, in any case keep on with this amazing work and thanks a lot again.

I’d like to make regular mesh clothing, flatten it, and then use a cloth modifier on it-- ie, start with a real mesh to make a pattern. I’ve actually used UV map exports as reference images for meshes to do this once or twice, and might consider doing it more often if it was easy.

Funny that you mention this I have been prototyping actually the last few days on this new Mesh Texture tool.

New Mesh Texture Tool

So first I finally managed to create a new mesh from an input mesh which contains 2 shape keys: a UV mesh and the model mesh. Using the shape keys I can actually blend between the 2. This works on any mesh with UV’s

Behind the scenes it morphs the hexagon pattern mesh with the shape key transition

In order to capture all verts to deform with the ‘Mesh Deform Modifier’ I add a solidify modifier to the UV mesh with a thickness of the height of the input texture.

There is a plugin for 3dsMax called AutoModeller Pro wich allows you to use geometry as textures http://www.automodeller.com/ Have a look on their website for ideas on this technique. Another known addon for 3dsMax is SlideKnit which does a similar technique.

What I have also added at this stage is a mode where you can select faces and create the UV mesh just from your face selection, this will be great for detail modeling where you need to project to only a sub set of your detailed model. At the moment I need to polish some parts more, like setting the solidify cage size and some better initial UV mesh size. This tool will be added in a future update.

I’m having some issues with the baking part. It seems to be a very powerful solution but i can’t really figure out how to make it works properly.
…I don’t know if i’m doing something wrong but, when i select all (but also in general) the explode button is grayed out.
Moreover, if i try to move any part just for a test purpose and i press the organize buttons to match their position again nothing happens.

The reason the explode button is grayed out is because you only have 1 bake set (low poly objects to high poly objects). Instead try this, name your objects like this: objectA, objectA_HP, objectA_door, objectA_door hp, objectA_switch, objectA_switch hp
I pretty much ignore usually the LP, low etc. name because its usually the base object anyway, but you can do either way.

Funny that you mention this I have been prototyping actually the last few days on this new Mesh Texture tool.

I’ve had a chance to play with this-- playing with it right now. It’s very cool. It’s one of those things that probably has some unanticipated creative possibilities. My only complaint are some of the things that it does automatically with display and modifiers on the generated mesh. And that’s not a big thing, just a little extra leg work for me.

@supaworstOuch that hurts, its a obvious bug to me but completely slipped the release. Thanks for reporting. Been thinking actually for a while to create a unit test environment for TexTools in blender. That’s why I started the other day on a simple unit testing addon. The idea is to test each operator against a blend file and collect errors and successful tests. This should eliminate errors like the one you have.

As for the tool: Will try to work on an update some time soon.@bandages

My only complaint are some of the things that it does automatically with display and modifiers on the generated mesh. And that’s not a big thing, just a little extra leg work for me.
Why do you create vertices for the UV bounding box?

Yeah I like the wireframes, as it makes it more obvious that it is intended as a Gizmo volume. The downside is obviously that it hides what is going on beneath the surface like the solidfy modifier and that there is a mesh not just edges.
As for the UV bounding box: I find that very useful to have, it gives a much quicker orientation of the UV space and where your mesh texture would fit. E.g. if you just select a few faces and create the UV mesh chances are that your generate UV mesh is just a tiny subset of a potentially bigger UV layout- it helps reading it.
Also should you export the UV mesh say as OBJ of FBX those edges are ignored as this is a unique feature of Blender.